What Are Protected Characteristics and How Do They Improve Your Working Life?

Careers, Guides, Jobseeker / 16 July 2025

Protected characteristics are aspects of your personal identity that are safeguarded against discrimination under the UK Equality Act 2010. This safeguarding extends to most areas of your life, including how you are treated at work. The nine protected characteristics are:

  • age
  • gender reassignment
  • being married or in a civil partnership
  • being pregnant or on maternity leave
  • disability
  • race, including colour, nationality, and ethnic or national origin
  • religion or belief
  • sex
  • sexual orientation
What Are Protected Characteristics and How Do They Improve Your Working Life?

Under the Equality Act 2010, discrimination means that you are treated less favourably than others because of one or more of your characteristics. If that characteristic is protected, the discrimination is illegal.

 

How do Protected Characteristics Protect You at Work?


The laws laid out in the Equality Act 2010 protect you from discrimination based on your protected characteristics. At work, this means that businesses must treat their employees fairly and without discrimination, from the initial recruitment process, through employment, and all the way to retirement. They must also make sure that their employees are not discriminated against by other members of staff or work practices.

There are four types of discrimination:

  • Direct discrimination: Treating a person less favourably than other people because of a protected characteristic.
  • Indirect discrimination: Implementing policies or practices that apply to everyone but put people with a particular protected characteristic at a disadvantage.
  • Harassment: Experiencing unwanted behaviour related to a protected characteristic that violates a person’s dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive environment.
  • Victimisation: Treating someone unfairly because they have made or supported a complaint about discrimination.

So what does protection against discrimination look like in the workplace? Here’s an example.

 

Example of Protection against Discrimination at Work


Suzanne works for an IT company. She is in her early fifties and has over 20 years’ experience in her field but is excluded from opportunities to work on high-profile projects. When she voices her concerns, she is told that the projects require ‘fresh, young, innovative eyes’, suggesting that her age is a disadvantage.

After Suzanne files a formal complaint, HR carries out a review and finds evidence of age discrimination. They create new guidelines to make sure that assignment of work and inclusion in projects are based on employee skills and knowledge, not age. The company provides anti-ageism training for managers and begins a cross generational learning scheme.

Under this new approach, Suzanne finds she is assigned to projects based on her skills and experience, working alongside both younger and older colleagues.

 

What to do if you Face Discrimination at Work


Employers have a legal obligation to make sure that their employees don’t face discrimination at work based on protected characteristics. It is your right as a worker to be treated fairly as laid out in the Equality Act 2010. You also have a right to complain if you feel you have been discriminated against because of one or more of your protected characteristics. Here’s what to do if you face discrimination at work.

  Keep a Record

Keeping a record of incidents of discrimination, even if there was only one incident, can improve your confidence in making a complaint and provide evidence for an investigation.

Your record should include:

  • what happened
  • how the incident(s) made you feel
  • dates and times
  • evidence, such as emails
  • any witnesses who can support your complaint

  Get advice

You may feel more comfortable getting advice and support before you make your complaint. If so, talk to Acas, your trade union representative, or the Citizen’s Advice Bureau.

  Contact your Employer

The first approach to your employer should generally be an informal one. Contact your line manager or the HR department to discuss the situation. It may be that your manager can talk to the person or persons who made you feel discriminated against and clear up the situation with no further action.

If an informal complaint doesn’t work, the next step is to make it formal. This is called raising a grievance. The employer should follow their grievance policy to deal with your complaint. This policy should, as a minimum, follow the rules of the Acas Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures.

If you feel the incident(s) of discrimination are too serious to be dealt with by an informal complaint, for instance, physical assault, you may immediately raise a grievance with your employer.

Your employer must respond to the complaint, even if it’s informal or there is a delay between the incident happening and the complaint being made. Their investigation should be carried out in a way that is fair to you, the person the complaint is against, and any witnesses.

  If the Discrimination Continues

If your employer doesn’t solve the problem and you continue to feel discriminated against, you can take the case to an employment tribunal. However, there is a time limit to make your claim of three months less one day from when the first incident happened.

If you feel forced to resign your job because of discrimination, you may be able to claim constructive dismissal through an employment tribunal.

 

Wrapping it up


Protected characteristics are aspects of your personal identity such as your age, your sexuality, and your marital status. Under the Equality Act 2010, you can’t be discriminated against because of your protected characteristics at work and in other areas of your life. Employers have a legal obligation to make sure that their employees do not face discrimination based on protected characteristics and may face penalties if they fail to do so.

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